Predictable Revenue

APRIL 30, 2020

How do recruiters – key pieces to building a sales team – source talent for their clients and themselves? Jamie Scarborough from The Sales Talent Agency walks us through the ins and outs of sales recruiting.

Sales Recruiting 213

Sales Recruiting Sales Revenue 213

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2020

Nothing matters but recruiting and using your personal network. Sam Blond, CSO at Brex explains why recruiting, networking and employee happiness is the key to this playbook on recruiting your sales team. Sam Blond | Chief Sales Officer @ Brex. I’m doing The Playbook To Recruiting Your Sales Team.

Sales Recruiting 187

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team 187

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to make that critical hire: the VP Sales. Because you’ll lose not just some incremental revenue, but potentially far more. All the second-order revenue you could have had (6x the initial lost revenue). You’ll end up with a crummy sales team under a mis-hire.

Sales Recruiting 360

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Engineering 360

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2020

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. I wanted to take a moment to explore the flip-side … a guide to why first-time VPs of Sales that finally get their shot — fail.

Sales Hiring 359

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 359

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

200+ dedicated workshops and braindates with the best in SaaS, Cloud and AI, from intimate small sessions to 20-50 person workshops from the best Our CRO + CEO Poker Night where we bring 200 top revenue leaders together with CEOs and founders of B2B / AI companies attending Our 4th annual CMO Summit for top CMOs and the CEOs that want to meet them!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2025

One of the classic original SaaStr posts was on the Top 10+ Questions to Ask a VP of Sales Candidate. It’s a different world today, AI-fueled, often distributed and hybrid, and with inflation both in titles (CRO or VP Sales) and compensation expectations. Use this updated script for hiring that first VP of Sales.

Sales Recruiting 177

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 177

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2025

Dear SaaStr: How Can I Crush a VP of Sales Interview? To nail a VP Sales interview, you need to demonstrate that youre not just a smooth talker with a great LinkedIn profileyou need to show youre the real deal. Too many VPs of Sales and CROs show up to interviews knowing almost nothing about the product.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Interviewing Sales Hiring Scale 195

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2025

Pre-Seed / Seed Stage (Pre-Revenue or <$1M ARR) At this stage, you’re compensating for high risk with high equity. For example, a VP of Sales driving ARR growth might get closer to 1%, while a VP of HR might be closer to 0.3%. Senior Managers / Directors : 0.1%-0.3%. Executives : 0.3%-1% Junior Employees : 0.01%-0.05%.

Part-Time VPE 207

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Compensation 207

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2025

In our most recent episode of CRO Confidential , hosted by Sam Blond , Graham Moreno , VP of Worldwide Sales at Codium, shared invaluable insights on what drove this growth, the challenges they faced, and how other SaaS companies can replicate this success. Key Growth Drivers 1.

Sales Hiring 179

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting AI 179

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, continues a mini-series on founder-led sales with Colin Zima, founder and CEO of Omni. The post SaaStr CRO Confidential: Omni Founder Colin Zima on the Power of Leveraging Your Network for Sales and Recruiting (Pod 658 + Video) appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Social Media Sales 246

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple WordPress blog and a few answers on Quora sharing Jason Lemkin’s learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR at EchoSign. Founders were able to recruit on-site.

Scale 300

Scale Sales Recruiting CTO Hire New CTO 300

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

When building a list, try to define your potential customer as granularly as possible – size, location, industry, ideal buyer, sales process, technology stack, etc. This will allow you to be much more targeted with your messaging when reaching out and will help you optimize your sales funnel. Pricing is always evolving.

Sales Recruiting 317

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 317

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2020

Q: What makes a great sales leader? The best sales managers / directors / VPs: Recruit great team members. Sales requires a linear number of hires to grow bookings. So you have to be a great recruiter to scale. In fact, the best sales leaders always upgrade the team within 60 days of taking a new role.

Sales Recruiting 286

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 286

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Justin Welsh, former SVP of Sales at PatientPop explains how he started in SaaS in 2009 as the second sales hire at Zocdoc. Justin used Sales Culture to grow a successful PatientPop team to 140 employees and 55 million in revenue. Justin Welsh | SVP Sales @ PatientPop. Want to see more content like this?

Sales Recruiting 331

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 331

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2024

Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career. They did this right at Brex.

Sales Recruiting 284

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

In the “old” days, there was a rough rule that as soon as you are bringing on more than 1–2 reps a quarter, you needed to hire a director of sales ops. That at that point, at a minimum, there would be too much administrative work for your VP of Sales to handle it herself. You want the sales ops help scaled up and helping before then.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2020

The most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales, which will drive you nuts at first, is … Not Right Now. Every business is mostly running OK already with its tech stack, and it’s unlikely your little app, alone, is going to change the revenue/profits course of any customer. I Don’t Have Budget. It’s Great, But Not This Quarter.

Sales Recruiting 343

Sales Recruiting Sales SaaS Software 343

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2025

billion valuation after 175M round Scale AI : $29 billion valuation / “sale” with Meta’s $14.3 The numbers tell the story: Q1 2025 : 39% revenue growth year-over-year, with U.S. commercial revenue surging 71% Stock performance : Up over 400% in the past 12 months, 63% YTD in 2025 Commercial momentum : 136 U.S.

AI Search 283

AI Search Artificial Intelligence AI CTO Hire 283

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

At SaaStr APAC 2023, Scott Pugh, VP of Sales at Figma, shared how to scale these two sales teams while building culture. Pugh’s strategy is simple, albeit not always easy: Recruitment — how to hire the best talent to scale your sales organization. Let’s look at five tips to consider for successful recruiting.

Scale 268

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 268

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2024

Kyle Norton CRO of Owner is kicking off a new podcast for Pavillion with revenue leaders, and we were lucky enough to be guest #001 here: It’s a great convo on many SaaStr themes — but from the perspective of a VP Sales / CRO. From Kyle’s summary: Here are eight takeaways from our conversation.

Technical Review 291

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 291

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2021

Q: What are the most common challenges of a VP of marketing transitioning into a Chief Revenue officer CRO role? But here’s what happens: They don’t know how to recruit an A+ sales team. Maybe they recruited a few BDRs to work with them in marketing, but that’s not the same. I’ve almost never seen this work. Not entirely.

Sales Recruiting 312

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Growth Marketing 312

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

What was the first warning sign your VP of Sales wasn't going to work out? A lot of veteran SaaS revenue leaders protested, but most of them, upon reflecting on it, came to agree the point was right. A new VP of Sales doesn’t always double sales in 30 days — although it can happen in SMB sales.

Sales Recruiting 269

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 269

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

So you wanna build a channel sales program: Don’t Copy HubSpot! All these companies are great companies with great channel sales programs. . Any channel sales program goes through an evolution. There are many reasons to start a channel sales program. Everything is harder with a channel sales program.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Technical Support Onboarding 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2021

Most of us can’t afford to hire a VPM 12 months before we have our first customer, and we can’t survive through 10 sales reps without one. It’s not quite as terrible as waiting too long for a VP of Sales. A great VP of Marketing can help make the sales reps better qualitatively, even before you have a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 351

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 351

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2020

I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting asked about the top mistakes hiring your first sales team so many times over the years, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List. Yes, you may be terrible at sales. It’s sales, after all. Here’s my Top 10 list: #1.

Sales Hiring 328

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 328

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2020

Founder-led sales generally stops scaling around $1m-$2m ARR. A sign to hire a real sales leader. Over the years at SaaStr we’ve talked a lot about hiring a great VP of Sales, when it works, when it does, and how it moves the needle. To stick with founder-led sales longer than most folks do, i.e. past $1.5m-$2m ARR or so.

Sales Hiring 321

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 321

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. The three things that led to ramping up sales at Flock Safety were: Achieving product-market fit.

Sales Recruiting 248

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 248

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

In the latest episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context – Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex’s outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR.

Sales Hiring 305

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Outbound Sales Team 305

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

It’s an incredible look back on scaling and more: Colin Jones, first Chief Revenue Officer at Wiz. Colin joined Wiz in February 2021 when the company was near zero revenue. Rather than seeing this as a liability, Wiz leveraged it as a strategic advantage — even in its sales team.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 179

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

What are the top 10 mistakes founders are still making today when hiring their VP of Sales? In this post, we’ll delve into the common pitfalls founders encounter when hiring a VP of Sales. 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. . #1: 1: You Can’t Stay Founder-Led Sales Forever. This one is newer.

Sales Hiring 298

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 298

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Dedicated Slack Channel For Every Metric From the early days at Secureframe, they have had a dedicated Slack channel for every metric: every net new sale, every expansion, every churn, and every expense. Let’s use net dollar or net revenue retention as an example. By keeping very similar revenue goals in mind.

Sales Recruiting 292

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 292

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2021

Sandi Lin, CEO and Co-founder of Skilljar, and Kathy Lord, its CRO, know a thing or two about Chief Revenue Officers. You might never have considered a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) because it’s not been a common role until very recently, and because you might not have the kind of revenue that needs its own manager.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Revenue 293

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2025

While competitors invested in huge sales teams, Atlassian actually restricted direct customer interaction. The “Reverse Channel” Effect Counterintuitive channel finding: Unlike traditional partner programs that start with recruitment, Atlassian let partners self-select by becoming power users first.

Sales Recruiting 201

Sales Recruiting Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Scale 201

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

A new revenue team. For example, a great Stretch VP of Sales might get you to from $50k to $500k a month in new bookings. To recruit the team and resources it takes not just to meet the plan this quarter, but the next one and the following quarters as well. Many first-time VPs just can’t recruit great managers under them.

Sales Recruiting 308

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Metrics 308

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I’m Being Recruited by a Startup That Just Raised $5m. So how you can do your own diligence as the first senior sales exec going in? It’s likely too early to judge based on revenue and a Google Search. How Do I Vet Them? First, there’s probably something there if they raised $5m. At least, usually.

Sales Recruiting 281

Sales Recruiting CTO Startup Sales 281

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

They hired their first VP of Sales with a wonderful pedigree and experience at some of the hottest startups. because they needed to rebuild the sales team. They rebuilt the sales team and closed some big deals. Lesson #3: Revenue Is Funding It’s harder and harder to raise money, and startups need to have more revenue.

Sales Recruiting 286

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 286